the question i have is.. do you always have to copy to harddrive and then burn?? if I purchased a second dvd drive... could i have the source in drive a: and destination in drive b:... and shrink and write on the fly.. is this possible?

While it is possible to do "on the fly" copies it is not recommended. In reality you save very little time if any. Your HD can feed the data to your burner much faster than another optical drive can. You end up having the buffer underrun feature kicking in because the burner is starved for data when another optical is feeding it which is a great recipe for bad burns.

If you are working with one drive, one option would be to install a modified firmware that will allow your burner to rip at much higher speeds than the standard 2X that most burners are locked at from the factory. This will get the data to your HD faster where, in turn, your HD will feed the data to your burner much faster as opposed to both optical drives trying to play "catch up" with each other.

It's still beneficial to get a ROM to rip your discs for a couple of reasons, one being they come from the factory able to rip at high speeds so you don't have to install a modified firmware on your burner and secondly it save a hell of a lot of wear and tear on your expensive burner. A good ROM to look at is the Lite On 166S for about $30.

Nephilim,
Is that particular dvd drive better than the other Lite On models? The reason I ask is kind of stupid. It looks like the 166s is white and I have a black computer. Do you know if you can get it in black?

Been off work for a while due to medical problems so AD has been keeping me off the streets and out of (most) trouble until I get back. Looks like I may go back to school to get work somewhere in the computer field No more construction electrician for Nephilim

I don't believe DVD Shrink has an "on the fly" option. Nero Recode 2 seems to. I have ripped and burned movies with little or no compression in 8-10 minutes burning at 8X using Recode 2. I usually burn at 6X, so it generally takes a few minutes longer than that. Of course if the movie has to be compressed a lot, it can take considerately longer. This is using a lite On 166S DVD ROM and a Pioneer A07 with hacked firmware. It is faster with two drives mainly because the DVD ROM reads faster than a burner and you don't have to swap disks. Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

If you use Nero Recode 2, you will have to install a free program called DVD43. Recode doesn't have a ripper but DVD43 will decrypt the movie while recode is running. You don't have to do anything with it other than having it in the system tray. It is automatic in what it does.